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Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

> Has it always been that way

Well, let's analyze each of your questions in turn.

> Since I came to the US there is this constant push for impeaching the sitting president

When did you come to the USA?

There was a constant push to impeach Obama. There was a constant push to impeach Bush. The was a constant push to impeach Clinton.

Clinton was elected in 1993, so there are a lot of adult Americans who were born in the USA and who can also say that "since I came to the US (aka was born), there has been this constant push for impeaching the sitting president".

> extreme gerrymandering

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Etymology

> and all the other nonsense

Congress seems to be more dysfunctional now than it was in the 80's and 90's. But there have been worse eras, too. At least the congressmen who've been shot lately weren't shot by other congressmen in duels, for example... :-\

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> Congress seems to be more dysfunctional now than it was in the 80's and 90's.

Electoral punishment for gaming the system to extreme levels, and even for misconduct that has no benefit for a party or candidates image or efficacy (blatant corruption, Roy Moore-type behavior [edit, 1]) has proven to be non-existent. The more various candidates and officials push, the farther it's clear they can go without punishment. Things are getting worse because they keep trying to push farther, and succeeding.

This is largely because of wedge issues—especially abortion, but also guns to a lesser extent. The problem won't go away unless we modify our election system to permit more than two viable parties at a time, so that, say, an anti-abortion party can go way off the rails and its saner voters can defect to another anti-abortion party, without losing anti-abortion voting power in legislative bodies (as, say, a protest vote would), and so on for every other issue. Proportional representation or something along those lines would help a lot. Most any effective change like this would also eliminate or greatly reduce the power of gerrymandering.

[1] Nearly non-existent—he did lose, after all, but narrowly.

"Congress seems to be more dysfunctional now than it was in the 80's and 90's. But there have been worse eras, too. At least the congressmen who've been shot lately weren't shot by other congressmen in duels, for example... :-\ "

I would prefer duels or fistfights overt the current state to be honest :-). Those tend to end after a while whereas the current state can go on forever.

The era of duels had problems beyond just the duels.

Civil wars tend to end but I'd prefer the current state of affairs over a full-blown war, to be honest.

>[There is a constant push to impeach Trump.] There was a constant push to impeach Obama. There was a constant push to impeach Bush. The was a constant push to impeach Clinton.

Is this considered normal? If so, why? It's like results of an election aren't final. A candidate wins yet people try to have him kicked out. :/

> Is this considered normal?

I don't know if it is considered normal, but it is normal.

> A candidate wins yet people try to have him kicked out.

Impeachment is in the constitution for a reason. Winning an election is not a sufficient condition for maintaining a public office. So on face, there's nothing actually wrong with trying to use a constitutional tool to kick out an elected official.

That said,

> If so, why?

You're kind of asking for a retrial of very polarizing figures from recent political history, a dangerous topic on hn, and I suppose that's the reason for the downvotes. I'm trying, here, to give an honest and historically accurate answer.

Obama and Bush impeachment advocates were mostly unjustifiable partisans, in the sense that there were never serious, constitutionally plausible, and widely-believed-to-be-true justifications for impeachment. That's probably why neither person was ever actually impeached. Consider this "the system working mostly as intended"

Clinton was justifiable, at least at one point in time, although we could fairly ask whether the same accusations would result in an impeachment today. Again, consider this "the system working as intended"

Trump is an open case, and these things are hard to judge without the benefit of hindsight. But there are at least serious, plausible accusations of impeachable conduct. We'll see if those accusations are true, I guess.

However, you'll note that in all of these cases except for Clinton, it was a minority of elected representatives from the opposition party calling for an actual impeachment.

The vast majority of opposition representatives did always call for investigations. But that's a checks-and-balances system working as intended IMO.

>Impeachment is in the constitution for a reason. Winning an election is not a sufficient condition for maintaining a public office. So on face, there's nothing actually wrong with trying to use a constitutional tool to kick out an elected official.

Doesn't the fact that there has been a push to get all the presidents kicked out mean there's something really wrong?

I think the question you ask should be re-stated in terms of magnitudes. I expect every president has had ardent opponents who want him impeached. The question is whether the mainstream component of the opposition party takes that desire seriously.

> Doesn't the fact that there has been a push to get all the presidents kicked out mean there's something really wrong?

Not especially, given that the “push” in the activist base hasn't procedurally gone very far in most cases. You'd find very few democracies where some members of the opposition (especially in the electorate) don't claim that any given leader’s behavior is unacceptable and should result in removal.

I mean, I think something did go wrong—Ford’s pardon of Nixon which was essentially justified by the argument that prosecuting a President would be too much for the nation to deal with—which has encouraged subsequent President's to view violating legal and Constitutional constraints on the power of the Presidency as safe because they are, in a sense, “too big to fail”.

But I while I think that has manifested in an increase in Presidential limit-pushing at least from Reagan on, I don't think that impeachment discussions are particularly a system if a deep political dysfunction.

The strongest cases for impeaching GWBush and Clinton are remarkably similar; Clinton for prosecuting a war without Congressional authorization, Bush for bad faith in the determinations required under what amounted to a conditional declaration of war by Congress.

OTOH, the Clinton impeachment that actually occurred (and ultimately resulted in a Senate acquittal) was on a completely different basis.

But that's not why Clinton was impeached.

As I mention: “OTOH, the Clinton impeachment that actually occurred (and ultimately resulted in a Senate acquittal) was on a completely different basis.”

"It's like results of an election aren't final. A candidate wins yet people try to have him kicked out"

Instead of impeaching Trump maybe the Democrats should start standing for something and try to get elected. This seems a much more straightforward way.

Where does this idea that Democrats don't stand for something come from? It's pretty clear what they stand for. While there is disunity within the party, it's no worse than what the GOP faces.

When I watched the last campaign the main message I got was that Clinton is not Trump and a woman and that's good enough to vote for her. I think she could easily have won if she had made a real case to vote for her.

I can't honestly imagine you were either so blind or stupid as to believe that either of those were her main messages. Was your point to say that you slept through the election or that you got all of your political information via Fox news and 4chan? Not sure which, but you certainly weren't actually paying attention in 2016.

I guess I am pretty stupid. Good to know.

Just in case you're serious: Her basic case was a continuation of Obama-era policies: Expansion of access to health care; focus on climate change; level-headed foreign policy; etc.

I think you're right, in a sense. She had a 52-point plan on her website which outlined her position on any number of issues. At heart, she's a policy wonk. Leslie Knope for president. If she had been a bit more simplistic, it would likely have spoken to voters a bit more (ala Bernie Sanders -- Economic fairness! Medicare for all! Free college!)

> Is this considered normal?

Impeachment looms larger in the public's imagination than it does in Congress's. It's normal for people wo want an elected official they dislike to go away, but let's be honest: it's mostly rhetoric and not action. Nixon and Clinton lost the public's confidence to a degree that forced the issue, but most people understand that it's not likely to happen even if they wish it would.

> If so, why? It's like results of an election aren't final.

This is essentially the point. Election results aren't final. We don't elect a king, or a dictator, for four years. We elect a President, who serves at our leisure, but whose power is checked by Congress, who also serve at our leisure. If Congress loses faith in a President - which is what impeachment implies - one would hope that they decide to exercise that option.

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